Dearly Beloved
by Cakes Blargh
Summary: You may try to abandon your title, you may try to run away from your throne. But when you kiss your mother's cheeks, when you tell your wife you love her, when you make those false promises, I would be behind those lips, in your mind, the twitch of your shaking hand. I am You, and you WILL be Me - a tale of the Champion of Cyrodiil who thought he could continue being a mortal.
1. Dreams and Memories

AN: This fic is gonna be fucking dark. Suicide. Murder. Depravity. It will deal with mature themes since this is Sheogorath and also because of the MC past(s).

* * *

 **Dearly Beloved**

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 **Chapter 1: Dreams and Memories**

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He painted. He sung. He danced. He invented. He taught the mortals, he punished the mortals. He gave them gifts. He joked and laughed. Then wept what seemed like forever. He had set his wrath on them, have denied their prayers, have sent towns into mass hysteria. All without reasons, simply because he felt like it. Why did he revolve his entire existence around them? They were tiny, so tiny in their lives, in their beings, in their destinies. They lived and died.

To be honest, they were boring. So boring.

But he adored them. He knew everything about them. What they could be. What they should be. What they would be. So many potentials. So many reflections. Yet they were like lapdogs, too content to their reality. Tiny, tiny lives.

Except they kept surprising him. To know all their potentials would not mean he knew which was the likeliest path they would take. That was His thing. But he liked to take a guess in the end.

They lived in the world where those left behind, those that did not fit in a square hole, those who couldn't be understood, a world where they left these mad people be to wilt, where they were alone, alone in a world different than theirs. No one who loved them for what they were. No one could understand them.

He was a Daedric Prince. He was their god. They had only him and his taciturn moods and his whims, and he only had them as his amusing, tiny, pitiful followers, his alone to subject. Not even time would take them from him, right?

But he had crushed those lives with his hands, had them purged in the gray fire of Greymarch. Their existence disappeared just like that. Forever. Jyggalag saw them as a stain on this Realm. Parasites.

He heard their prayers. Their pleas. Their screams.

 _Where were you, My Lord? Save us, Lord Sheogorath! Please, Madgod._

A dead Realm waited for him when he woke up what felt like a terrible dream. He laughed. Was this what it meant to be the Madgod? To just turn around, betray everything what they expected him as their god, stabbed himself in his own back. He had no reason to bend to their expectations, over his own expectations even.

But his arts, his musics, his cities, his towns, his works? They were all gone. Just a single crumbling ruin. Empty blank canvas. No laughter. No cry. No anger. Silence. A dead… dead Realm. He didn't like it. But it was beautiful in its own way. It felt like seeing his Realm for the first time. Unlimited potentials just for him to shape. His Realm.

He started again. He painted. He danced. He made musics. He invented. He taught mortals. He gave them gifts. He joked and laughed. He twisted their spines, their bloodcurdling screams immortalized in his mind. Living. They were alive. They were his. His pitiful subjects that only had him as their god. They were always more followers, more subjects waiting, easily replaced.

His Mazkens, his Aureals came back after he rang their bells and shattered Order hold on the music he gave to them. The chimes guided their souls in the silent void of the waters of Oblivion, a comforting rope for them to grasp. Even though knowing truth, even though they remembered, they were still willing, they were still loyal. He wondered why they chose to make an oath to him when they were other Lords of Oblivion that were better and less treacherous.

He comforted himself that this was the present now. The dream was just the past, a distant memory.

But the nightmare came again. Resolute, he kept going, hardly bothered and tried not to mind in picking up the pieces. He realized he hated the silence. This beautiful canvas that awaited him felt… sinister. But it made what was gone all the more beautiful.

He grew frustrated. He hasn't even finished his works! He had incompleted paintings, mortals to annoy, he had plans, his own schemes as a Daedric Prince ruined by other Princes. It was like they waited for this moment, taking advantage of this one lapse of judgment that wasn't under his subject, his own control.

He had a time limit? What kind of god was he to be subjected to some time limit?

He kept a pocket watch just in case but again forget himself in his long work as the Prince of Madness.

A recurring nightmare. All his efforts, all his time, all his work goes to waste. Erased. His mortals, his followers… their last memory were their cries, their unanswered prayers, betrayal, bitterness, fear, hatred, anger over him, their clouded eyes cleared into a moment of clarity. He was their doom.

It was then he realized this was not what he wanted. He grew desperate, more anguished.

It was a curse. This was a curse. He started to hate Jyggalag. He started to hate this _consistent_ pattern. His power would wax and he would undo everything his Twin had done. Just to spite Him. But then it would wan, and it would be Jyggalag's turn to undo everything.

He was a joke. He was a giant fool of the cosmo. His entire existence was a big giant prank for Jyggalag. He was an entertainment, something to be laughed at, something the Princes would hide their smirk. A mockery of a god.

He realized what triggers the curse. What made the cycle a cycle. The throne. The office. Their own divinity trapped into this pattern. Jyggalag prided in conquering Oblivion, bringing a change, Order over its vast seas regardless of the Princes machinations. The realms He clasped were His proof.

And it would be because of this nature, His own Realm would be His own undoing. When the curse struck, when he came to be, all swaths of realms under His rule picked apart until only one was left, the very Realm He first started, the very Realm that spoke of His status as a Prince.

Jyggalag couldn't let go of His Realm, wouldn't quit and abandon it, redonning his office with His unwillingness. Too much pride, would not let Himself bend over to the other Princes wish. He would come to have this in common later.

He was pathetic, without free will. Out of all the Princes, His sphere was the most accursed and ironic. Jyggalag despised the idea of treading away from the pattern, from this only order, His only authority left in Him, the only thing He had after what the Princes did to him.

He despised him, His own twin, He would never lose to him and what he represented. But if He did abandon this Realm… the curse would have been broken. And he, Sheogorath would have ceased to exist but at a price. What kind of Prince would He be without a Realm? He wasn't sure he felt thankful that Jyggalag didn't just up and left.

But if he ceased to be, his followers wouldn't have to suffer this miserable fate of false promises every single time. If he ceased to be, the curse would have been broken, the cycle ended. Except you can't _end_ a Daedra. And why should he ceased to exist?! He was just as much in this miserable fate as He.

He resented the suicides. They thought they could escape his will, their own treacherous fate. They wasted their potentials! They chose to cut their lives short. He wouldn't let them go. He couldn't let them go. He loved them. He loved his mortals just as his mortals loved him.

Well, perhaps it wasn't love because how could you love something if you can't even to remember the details like their name, their personality and confused them with some other. When he didn't even understand. Well, at least there was a part of him that cared for them, but it didn't make it a beautiful tragedy. It made it all the more painful.

They were his mortals, his own pathetic mortals.

If only there was a way for him to be there when it happened. A way to defend his Realm, to answer his people's prayers, lead them in the moment of despair. If only he was there to stop Him from taking the throne, from starting the cycle over again. But how?

His Mazkens, his Aureals, they could do nothing, couldn't leave a scratch on Him. A Prince power was absolute in their own Realm, but it was his Realm as well! He just needed to be there. Except he couldn't be there because he was HIM.

But even he was gone, his powers were still there before it truly vanished just like him. He just needed someone who could wield this power. Someone who could sit and defend the throne. A… _me_ against Him. A champion.

He started experimenting. Artifacts were the start. They could hold a portion of his power. Only a portion, though. Not enough to defeat Jyggalag. He needed something, someone to wield _all_ of his power. How about making a mortal into such vessel?

Turns out, stuffing a daedric power, especially of a Prince was a bad idea. They've become... well, less than reliable. More of a mess. Mortals… so fragile even though he tried to change them into something that wasn't. With mixed results.

So he couldn't just force his own powers down someone's throat all at once. He tried to give this power to one of his captains but even they couldn't hold onto it. It was like his own power did not like being away from him, it would just come back to him. The nature of daedra. Guess this was the problem being of divinity.

Mortals had more potentials anyway.

Perhaps stuffing his powers all at once wasn't the right way. How about gradually instead? Not for their sake only, but for his own power to settle in them. Perhaps holding the power was too much, wielding it though, drawing it out gradually, a medium like an artifact, like his staff. Oh.

But that wasn't enough. Mortals who didn't know how to wield it, _all of it_ , was useless.

He needed a capable, powerful champion. So he searched those with the most potentials, weeded out the most capable, made them _walked_ , taught them how. And one arose, leading his poor mad people in their despair, misery, laughter and rage. And so did his hope.

His time was running, but his plan, they would work.

He parted with his dear mortal, left him with his staff and told him what to do. If Jyggalag would not let go of his Realm, then he would force Him with all of his power.

Finally.

He woke up to silence. Again. Didn't it work? Why didn't it work? How could it not work?!

Only eery silence, the broken walls of his palace and a dead broken Realm greeted him. For the first time in his entire existence. He was shocked. Numbed. He sat on his throne, doing almost nothing without budging to pick up the pieces.

And his dear mortal? He… survived? He had half the mind to rip out his spine. Things were like this because he failed to do what he was supposed to do! But… there was something wrong with his failed champion.

He didn't need to look into his mind to know he had changed. His dear mortal gone. The power he left in him that had changed him was now gone, back to its own cursed owner. In a way, his mortal champion survived and yet died. Not quite what and who he once was, not quite what he was supposed to be.

He underestimated Jyggalag's power. He overestimated this mortal, his own plan. It should've worked. His own power should've been enough to face the Prince. But instead of saving his Realm, his people… it made this vestige the first but only survivor of the purge.

His once promising champion dared to nag at him, prodded him, questioned him, lacking proper fear or typical respect from his usual followers. He was like a lost frustrated lamb. Sheogorath stared amusingly at the mortal. "Your name is Haskill. You lived to serve me."

What was supposed to be his symbol of success became a symbol of his biggest failure.

 _You walked but failed to hold the throne, failed to stop the Greymarch and in turn, you failed to hold onto the mantle of madness. You've failed me. And I've failed you._

A vestige instead of his means of resurrection. He never bothered going back to this idea if this was the result. If it weren't for Haskill, he would've wasted a century sitting on his throne, not budging to pick up after Jyggalag's mess. His chamberlain had a habit to incessantly nag, bold enough to show his disdain in front of his lord, prodded him to once again… be the Prince of Madness.

He had resigned himself as a cursed god and embraced his existence, his purpose as a warden, as a prisoner, as a joke… His attempts to break this curse, this jail, trying again and again to stop Jyggalag, clowns in hole, pitfalls, traps, walls around the throne, everything. He tried everything, but he didn't like remembering the details as all ended in failure. It was only when His time was coming around that clarity would remind him not to expect anything of his plan.

The Princes were sure laughing at him, at Jyggalag. A once in a thousand years entertainment. But soon they too grew bored after eons. At least he had some laugh, at least he had fun in making it hard for Jyggalag. But His will was absolute and he grew tired of the game.

He may resign to this existence, but he would never stop finding a way. It wasn't impossible.

He was not like Jyggalag, he would not settle his fate to this eternal dance. He would not let Jyggalag win. He would not let Them reduced him into a simple puppet. There has to be a way. Things WILL change! He just needed to find a solution, until then he would keep trying.

The Aurbis can change. Change was in its song. In the Grey Matter, all was possible and yet not. All true and yet false. The oldest song in the universe would be his song. A song of freedom. A song about free will. About a change that would last. A change that mattered.

He tried the old idea again a few more time throughout the cycles with Haskill's encouragement. Just with some changes in it. Improve on it. New cause, different effect, felt like it was a fresh idea each time. But none of them came close, none could become the Prince of Madness. They could hold his throne, they could hold his power, but could never truly become him. And Jyggalag would wipe away what remains of his effort before taking the throne back and in turn… his power. All he was left was memories of failures.

No fragments, no vestiges, and even if there were he wouldn't tolerate their existence as failures.

The most promising one out of all of them failed spectacularly. It turned out relying on a madman to carry out your plan wasn't a good thing, considering that madman made a giant fool out of himself with his death. All those promises and powers his prophet had didn't help out his followers who saw his death as proof of their fantasies, dangerous fantasies that reminded him again what a failure all of it was… and he didn't need to be reminded of them.

Sheogorath hated failures.

The carnages that he had to clean up after that particular _stunt_.

Over time, he came to realize that at least, he could contain the damage, saved a handful of his people, even the fool of his prophet followers that still lingered long after his death… even ignorant Ciirta. He had yet to truly stop the curse on its track when its time come, but this time though he felt this was his year. He could feel change in the air, oh wait, that could have been Mehrunes Dagon.

On the year 433, the Third Era, the last year of the Septim Empire, the Dragon sang and left the faint echoes of its mad dragon to finish its own song. It spoke of promises and duties, a hand to guide its history. Pah! Too bad he had a better use of that hand. He cared not that in a different time some other mortal came to be his champion, what mattered though in that vast river of time, the one that he needed would become his last piece of this puzzle and that was enough to send ripples to all others.

* * *

 _I tried to make my own freedom before. All those mortals, all those plans, all those champions… But none of them work, none of them succeeded no matter how much I've made them walked. Much good they did to my Realm._

 _But you… you're different._

* * *

The purple air swirled violently. Coiling, roiling, bristling and shoving. Light streaked beneath the angry dark purple cloud, flashing blindingly and rumbling deeply. A raging storm. Thunder crackled and the wind howled as the fierce air swirled in a maddening pattern.

A glimpse of gray could be seen beneath the angry purple; the gray obsolete, unchanging and adamant under the shifting purple storm. It looked like an island… frozen, bleak piece of gray slab and the purple storm, like an unstoppable force, was trying to tear it apart.

The Isles… just sat there like an immovable rock. A cry of despair was barely heard beneath the howling and rumble. It was a heart-wrenching cry, a cry that sunk uncomfortably into his bones. The god hunched over his dead… dead Realm, weeping in his grief as the thunderstorm raged, drenching him in unending water.

 _Lord Sheogorath._ He reached out toward him gently.

The storm seemed to dance around the Prince, as always in its maddening pattern while the wind lashed and tried to flick the Daedra playfully into its embrace. The just storm crackled as if chuckling while it swept across the surface of the Isles. A chuckle that broke into a weeping laughter of lunacy. Joyful. Triumphant. Relieving.

A hand rested on the god's shaking shoulder but a death-gripping hold snatched onto his wrist. He slowly rose up and turned around. Gray eyes of his own stared back, but instead of round black pupils, it was slitted pupils of a cat glistening from tears. Theodore grinned at himself alike to the Madgod he once knew.

"Wakey wakey, shakes and bakey, Me~" Sheogorath said cheerfully with his mouth.

* * *

The Count of Kvatch woke up with a lurch, his chest heaving as his heart rattled within its cage, his hands clutched tightly on the white thin blanket that covered his thin frame. A man's heavy breathing permeated the humid night air.

It went on for a while until his feet slid off and settled down on the cold stone floor. They slowly made its way to the mirror that hung on the wall. The Champion of Cyrodiil stared at the reflection, faint moonlights through the uncovered glass windows paint the room with dim light.

A gaunt man stared back him, hardly fitting the image of a holy man, the Divine Crusader. Let alone, a son of Warhaft. His black hair gone, instead, it was an unnatural white ethereal hair that was out of place in the pale darkness. Theodore sighed, scratching his cheeks where the stubbles of his white beard were starting to grow. A man at his age shouldn't have white hair this early unless he was some albino.

It was a hair that adorned the prophet he once knew, a sharp witty fellow who seemed to quietly make fun of him behind his prophetic preaching. No doubt, the Prophet had laughed when he asked if the gods would take back the growing white locks out of his hair.

But this was something he was now used to. It was his eyes that were the problem… his right eye technically. Theodore stared with a grimace. Slitted-black pupil. Now instead of gray, it was purple.

Not a good sign.

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AN: Yeah, Cyrodiil will rejoice at the idea their Divine Crusader has the mark of the Mad Prince on him.


	2. Love and Daedra

_A stick is a stick in any other's hand._

 _A throne is still a glorified chair._

 _A fool is still a fool even when he sits on the throne._

 _But only those willing to shake the very heavens that they become more. And you were willing, there's no denying that_.

* * *

They sat beneath the towering walls within the inner garden of Castle Kvatch, the Count of Kvatch though did not hide his open displeasure at the gray walls surrounding his world. In his youth, he was more familiar to the open space of his garden that was the ancient rainforest surrounding his family manor. During his time as a lowly man, he had preferred his enclosure open to the naturals.

In a cage made of stones and mortar, cooped up within the fortress, he was no court songbird, more of a fierce hawk that only glared and sat there at his own willingness and steely patience. He was dressed in his ceremonial robes of his office, black and white threads with gold gilds. A silver longsword and a dagger laid by his side, a calling to the olden days where the ruling kings were the military lords and generals of Colovia who would wear their medals and badges, even their armor as a show of status and power.

It was a formality that was often practiced by those with Akaviri ancestry, and he was a bit intimidated by that. He was a simple priest in his simple spun robes, sent by Oleta to counsel the Count of Kvatch. He was no advisor of rulers or a councilor of politics, he was also no master healer that could wash killing disease from the bodies of mortals and make miracles.

He was a spiritual guide. A healer of heart and soul. A counsel for ill minds. As most priests should be, but it was a field that was a lot more complex than just healing broken bones and saying comforting words.

"Do you like music?" he suddenly asked at the silence that sank uncomfortably between them.

The Count of Kvatch stared, gray eyes half-lidded and obviously bored at this session.

"Yes," he said quietly.

"Oh," the priest said. "Do you often listen to them?"

"No. I despise the court minstrel and bards," he answered. "Wretched and mundane, not even a lute could save their voice. Always prattling praises and singing heroic songs." He rolled his eyes.

"Then what kind of music do you like?"

He was quiet at that before he slowly said, "Choir songs. Hymns and Arias, opera, but not the long boring ones. Never liked those." He shook his head. "I prefer the beautiful, haunting songs. If not, the fast-paced simple music in festival and dancing. They are more real, more emotions, unpredictable, changing. And you can only hear it once since in the next year they would change the song bit by bit. Always different, but familiar."

"The temple of Dibella does have something like that."

"Did," he corrected tersely.

"Umaril," the priest gulped when he said the demon's name. "Who was she?"

The count stared at him and rested his chin on his hand before leaning on his arm. "She's the reason why I love the temple's music." He sniffed in amusement. "She was… in a way, the start of my downfall."

"Downfall?"

"I'm sure you heard of the rumors, how I was an honest man who lived and worked amongst the common mass, and how I was noble born and was taught and trained how to maintain estates and lands." He smiled drily. "Half right, but half wrong. I was a murderer for the Dark Brotherhood and a thief. Twenty-nine or was it thirty lives lost and doomed to the Void?" He wondered but shrugged. "I lost count."

"Well then, at least we've got the confession part out of the way." He laughed but stopped awkwardly. "You are honest and open, that's good."

The count gave a thin smile.

"You mentioned your downfall. Was it why you killed in the first place?"

"They say love could change a man, do you believe that?" If this was any other environment, he would have thought the man was slightly flirting from the smirk and lazy eyes as he leaned his cheeks against his palm.

But the brittle flash of his joking attitude disappeared back to his dour grimace.

"Love, power or money," the priest added. "But the saying is a… simplification. Life is more complex than that, I'm afraid."

"Do you think people can change themselves?" he said these words dully. "Do you think they can save themselves after they walked past the line of right and wrong?"

"I think all souls deserve redemption and forgiveness."

"And punishment?"

"Punishment is useless if good values are lost behind harsh lessons."

"The words of a follower of Mara," he murmured in amusement. "So you are against our current system because they make for poor lessons?"

"I'm against all methods that reduce our worths. One should teach fellow men to be good people, not reduce and distant them as if they were less than animals."

Locked and confined within jails, to piss, shit, eat in the same space with the only companions being uncaring guards who were there for their septims, and the scums that were worse and less than the condemned. Waiting for death row or judgment as most confinements were short to spare the provincial's expense of maintaining and feeding the imprisoned, then they would face heavy fines that could cripple their whole family financially, or public shaming by bringing the worst out of fellow men and women, if not instilling pain and torture in them as a harsh reflection of the gravity of their crimes and for false confession.

So as to put fear in the hearts of people lest they stray from obedience and being law-abiding citizens.

How was that teaching men the right and wrong, what was good, how to be with people as part of the good of society?

The count laughed. "You truly believe all mortals are capable to be good."

"We all come from the womb of dreams, we are all made from the gods and stars, we are all the same and so we are all capable."

"And yet in this world of the living, there are some not born equally as their fellow men. The gods bore us and yet they cripple us as well."

"The Aurbis is a spectrum of gray, not black or white, even the gods suffer at the difference and the division between them all, and we take after them, but the differences between us are closer. We strive to be better so that we do not repeat the mistakes of our ancestors." He quickly breathed in. "I apologize, I didn't mean to preach my teachings."

The count laughed again. "You are the most idealistic of all the priests I've met. The ones I know are cynical or short-tempered."

"I supposed our head priestess might come off as short-tempered," he conceded gravely.

"Kvatch is blessed to have an experienced and master healer such as her," the count sobered as his steely demeanor reappeared. "A lot of people are alive if not for Oleta, myself included." He gave a wry smile.

The priest bowed low at that. "And Kvatch would not be standing if not for the Divines sending a miracle for us all, Your Holiness." His head remained low, but a frown had remained on his face in his recollection of the count unwillingness to offer his hand for the kiss of fidelity. A custom of respect for his status as the Divine Crusader and the Emperor's companion.

"I'm anything but holy," the count said quietly with a tone of resentment. "All I'm good for is taking things, either the lives of men or their worths. I'm not even sure if that makes me better or worse than my predecessor."

He blinked at that and raised his head. "You are worshipped as his incarnate, my lord. And incarnates have only but one purpose, to rectify where their predecessor failed. In a way, the gods hoped you would be better than your first."

There was a snort, but a smile graced the count, it was a sad smile. "I doubt Pelinal has a heavy conscience like mine and dreams of his loved ones screaming for help. In fact, I recalled he rather embraced his mad nature as divine than deal with grief as good men are wont to do."

"Are you accusing your first of cowardice?"

"No," the count said gravely but there was a sneering contempt and yet amusement that suddenly overcame him with his voice slightly changing. "Only patheticness."

The priest was silent at that. "I admit, I'm not one to believe the old tales of the first Divine Crusader, as they are…"

"Nasty?" The count finished for him. "You're not alone. Men and mer have come far since the old days, but some things remained the same." He shook his head as he remembered something.

"You spoke of dreams of loved ones screaming, my lord."

"Not just in dreams," the count added as his expression shifted back to the pained grimace. "I hear her too. Praying. She calls not the gods, nor curses her immortal captors. She calls for _me_ to save her."

"Who?"

"My wife," the lord said softly, his fist squeezed together and shook at his side. "She… and my sons were killed during the Crisis." He gave a bitter smile. "I had hoped they escaped or were merely taken but I know that fate is worse than death itself."

Regrets were something he saw far too common amongst his patients, the count seemed no different now. He could see why Oleta had wanted this meeting to happen today.

"My lord, did you wish you had done something different?"

"I… I don't know." He shook his head. "We didn't live in the city, far from the roads, at home in the heart of the forest. Too far apart, and only one path can only be taken. Chorrol, to fulfill our late emperor's last wish, or back to my family." But how could he know how devastating the Crisis would be? That even the gates opened to only roads would pour Daedra that laughed in setting Cyrodiil's forest ablaze and into ashes.

The count exhaled and a bitter smile formed on his face. "My family has to die for Kvatch and all of Tamriel to live."

* * *

 _"To think the Madgod would receive a counseling from a priest of the Divines."_

He ignored that laugh in the back of his mind as he sat on the edge of his bed in the cool stone room of Castle Kvatch. The session overall felt meaningless and only left bitterness welling up in his throat. He wasn't sure if he felt obliged for another even at the ire of the aged priestess Oleta.

While he owed her his life, he had paid it by willingly given it to her city to shut the gate of Oblivion.

Theodore sighed and stood up from his bed, slowly approaching the mirror on the wall. The skin on his cheek seemed to cling on him, his fingers were becoming more spindly and thin as a bone, even his clothes clung to his small frame. He felt like a corpse and he would have looked like a corpse if it weren't for the fact he was being fed meticulous by the ever-worrying servants and at the temple's inspection of his health.

So soon Kvatch was graced with a count, though he doubted it was because of his merit at being good with paperwork and bureaucracy for he had none of them in experience other than dealing with forging identities and reading documents, accounts and the estates of his robberies. For Kvatch, his ailing health was not a common thought but it was one that people would gossip and grew somber at the thought of being bereft of a count again and so soon.

He wasn't sure if his mortality is a blessing, that his nightmare of being trapped and used by the Prince was simply just that, a nightmare. Except his right eye said otherwise beneath the thin veil of enchantment he had cast onto himself. He only needed to be careful around mages experienced in the art of Illusion as they were the only people likely to see through his spell.

Theodore wondered morbidly if he cut himself and let himself be bled dry on this very cold stone floor, would he be free of the curse of madness that was Sheogorath? If he really was cursed, he thought ruefully. Sheogorath was more likely to be a product of his mind than… well, the Prince himself. Maybe his right eye was really a trick, perhaps it was wise to continue the sessions then? But what could the temple do? What could they say that would treat his problems? Admitting and seeking help wasn't something he'd found ultimately beneficial, but he was oddly amused and curious at the thought of trying.

He wondered many things, if he could die, if he was truly a god. He wondered what would happen to his soul if his body collapsed right here and now. Was it really suicide when it was a compelling curiosity that driven him instead of an ailing mind crying for help? He wondered at times, the soft crying and begging he hears in the faint distant was truly the cry of his wife.

 _"Want to try?"_

But it couldn't be, she had died… he was there to see the fire of the Oblivion Crisis claiming the house they lived, the home that made a man like him more than a killer and sinner that he was. The world and the future he had built with honest callous hands collapsed that day onto itself and with him within it, or so it would have been if not for Martin pulling him out in his moment of despair before a wooden post could fall and snap his spine.

But was she killed? Or was she taken? The Daedra did not spare a single mercy for his sons as they had no need for mortal children. But their mother? He did not find her bones in the ashes of his home. He had searched for her, villages, towns, cities, caves and the woods even. He had entered the gates for her, fought through countless of Daedra to reach those hellish towers, those prisons. But he could not search for every tower, for each prisoner, each time he delayed it would mean more neverending Daedra spilling and killing into the world.

Kill the Daedra, take the Sigil stone, shut the gate quickly. That was the right thing to do, was it?

He sat back down on his bed then laid down on its red silk cover. He had strictly dissuaded the servants attending to him in changing his clothes and preparing his bed. He was in no mood in keeping up with appearance even at the ire of the old servants who would assume they were better regarding how to strip him from his clothes without harming the articles in particular.

The office uniform didn't help. Apparently, there was a correct way on how to undress them with some clothes requiring extra hands in order to wear them. Considering how swift the servants' fingers could be without a single thread snapping from being pulled sharply at what should be harsh wrestling exercise with the count and his clothes, Theodore begrudgingly allowed the experts baby him. Less futile struggle and quicker that way.

He exhaled heavily once again before lifting himself up, pulling the cover and slipping beneath them. From the smoothness and the smell of dried linen, the sheets were changed again. He really needed to stop this habit of waking up in cold sweat, he grimaced. For a long time, he laid there, blinking once, then twice, waiting for slumber to reach him.

He only ended up hearing the sound of creaking, a chair rocking back and forth and the crackling of flames. Theodore turned his head slowly to see Sheogorath knitting on a blackened burnt chair that should have snapped under the Prince. Desolate gray landscape surrounded them, a wooden skeleton remains of his small house stood slanting over them, roaring and crackling with fire he could not feel. The castle was nowhere in sight.

"How long am I going to have these kinds of dreams?" he asked drily.

"How long you're going to deny her crying?" The senile god just cheerfully smiled as he knitted using his yarns, surrounded with destruction. His appearance eerie and disarming as he looked exactly like him but older, paler with inhuman eyes, and a white beard and hair instead, wearing a purple regal gilded with patterns of tree barks, diamonds, and eyes. Or was it he was the one who happened to look like Sheogorath. A simple coincidence, after all, Daedra were known to change their forms, gods especially were known to appear differently to each of their followers.

"She's dead."

"Is she?" he challenged with amusement. "Why don't you try and look for her?"

"She's just a figment of my mind." _Just like you are._

"And if she's not," his own voice snapped, unforgiving and a hint of anger.

"If she's real, she would be surrounded by monsters," the hero snapped. "Look at me!" He swept off the cover. "Do I look like I'm ready to face an army, again!"

"Excuses, excuses." The god looked up and down, chiding. " _Take a bath_ ," he sneered. "Preferably the Fountainhead. It will cleanse what Mannimarco had done to you. It's a pity, Traven's apprentice didn't seek you out earlier, would have saved us a lot of problems if we had that Black gem."

"I'm not going back there."

"Oh." The god grinned. " _Why's that?_ " Sheogorath was up and standing, needles still knitting, fingers swift and smooth, undeterred by the sudden motion.

He did not speak from where he sat dourly, merely glared.

"You want to die, don't you?" The Prince said cheerfully then he slammed a needle into his knee.

"Mother-" Theodore screamed.

Sheogorath laughed and clapped his hands happily as he danced in a stumbling manner, his own knee bleeding as well. "You are a coward, you are a coward!" He sing-songed as he stumbled in his twirl. "You can't face her, can't you? Sorry, got caught in jail just a few days away from an apocalypse, honey," he mocked in his voice. "Found our little triplets in the ground," Sheogorath suddenly wept, covering his mouth, tears freely spilled down the god's face. "Little Felix, Festus and Alex-"

"Stop."

"Huddling in the basement, fire had all consumed our house. Floor collapsed on them. Thank gods," Sheogorath breathed, his voice haunted by memories, his own voice. "The smokes got to them. Thank god. Oh, thank god..." _They didn't get to them._

It was no secret that conjured and Daedric weapons capture the souls of those it kills, and the Daedra were notoriously known to keep mortal souls as tools to use and trade, maybe to show off their spoils amongst their peers, maybe as a form of currency and favors. But in the end, all mortal souls go to one place when doomed, an eternity in the Void.

He could not bear the thought of his children left alone in a cold dark place, lost forever, never to feel the warmth of living, never to know of home.

"And yet you could bear the thought of your wife doomed to an eternal hell," Sheogorath whispered to the shaken man then laughed uproariously. "And here I thought I was going to deal with dirty dreams, and a whiny body that wants to eat, piss, fuck and shit until I don't have to."

The Prince spun around. "I was looking forward to that, dirty dreams." He grinned nastily. "Never really get this mortal coitus thing your kind so absorbed about!" Sheogorath then gasped dramatically and covered his mouth, he then looked at his Champion with wide eyes. "You, me… Wouldn't that make it… a threesome?" He left it hanging with a nasty grin growing. "Or is your wife into that?" He hummed.

The sweet sound of her whispering, the thought of her wringing her hands, the thought of touching his wife in that way while Sheogorath was just… right there beneath his skin, it made him feel sick in the guts. It felt like an act of violation and dishonesty, any sane good person out there would not consent the mad Prince into their bed. He glared at the Prince with hatred. "You know, I used to think you were a funny god, but now…"

"Now what, Champion?" Sheogorath tilted his head with that sly grin.

Now… now Sheogorath was a lot more personal, purposely twisting knife in wounds, digging up skeleton in closets and rubbing salt when he could. He was like…

"A shadow in your subconscious, a personal demon, your self-loathing with a voice? Maybe you're right, I'm just a figment of your mind. Not the real Sheogorath." Sheogorath smirked and laughed, bending over and clutching his stomach. "I am you," he poked him on his head roughly in his giggling. "You are me! We're a happy…" then he frowned in his singing. "You know family doesn't sound right, now that I think about it." He scratched his chin and wandered off.

"Or maybe… maybe it's right," he murmured when he stopped, his eyes downcast as the home around them burn. "Maybe we're still… a family, we're still together, can still be together," his tone sounded hopeful then it turned flat. "Oh wait, I'm too much a little bitch to save you, honey!" Sheogorath snickered.

A wooden post snapped and collapsed after the Prince, the flame swallowing the god as the Prince laughed and disappeared to dust and ashes. The Champion of Cyrodiil only curled up and covered his face as the house burn. There was nothing left for him here, only the glory of godhood was all he had. He only needed to come back, take the throne, become more than a shadow of a man that he was and forget _this_.

"I still have a purpose here," the man snapped bitterly.

Yet here he was, doing nothing while he hears the cries of Oblivion resounding in his dreams and in his waking world. The lulling motion of living could not drown them. What good could a broken man like him do here, could do for Kvatch and Tamriel? Another could take his place and nothing would change.

But she was there, trapped in that god forsaken realm and he could do something about that. He could not bear the thought of abandoning her. But how was he going to get there? When Dagon fell, his realm was put on a lockdown, no Daedra under his rule could be summoned anymore, no portal could be opened as easily as before.

 _But you are a Prince, no?_

That kind of power breaking into his realm was not something the Prince of Destruction going to overlook and it would risk a Daedric war between two gods. He doubted Shivering Isles was ready after Greymarch, especially when the curse was designed to make Sheogorath at his weakest as Order waxed. They were only starting to recover. This was risky jailbreak.

He had faced against the odds before, had defied the outcomes, didn't give a damn to the determination of fates.

Why bother now?

"How do I get into the Deadlands?" he asked.

A whoosh, the roaring flames disappeared into the wind. Sheogorath was slowly clapping as he looked at him drily.

"Any good count has a summoning room," the Prince told him cheerfully. "We'll have to poke a hole through reality there."

"And Dagon?"

"After his invasions failing again? I'm afraid he would not be ready dealing with Princes and politics so soon," Sheogorath sniggered. "Or maybe he would, two times he has been pegged down but he comes right back up! That's Mehrunes Dagon for you. His ego has been bruised, and he would not take another abuse, the question is... three times a charm, right?" Sheogorath grinned. "He might or might not face us. His armies though would face you for glory for they were stolen of theirs."

"So it's just a coin toss then?"

"A coin toss? I prefer a spinning spigot if you ask me," Sheogorath told him. "But anything for the sweet, sweet damsel, right?" He made a very rude gesture about woman's body.

"My wife is hardly a sweet damsel." His tone was flat and unfriendly.

"No, oh no," Sheogorath shook his head with a sad smile, but his grin came back on. "She's a good mystery, one that itches teeth to unravel her."

His fist was shaking now and the frown had deepened. He did not like how Sheogorath referred his wife.

"What kind of woman who would lay her bed with someone like you? But Sheg-Sheg," the Madgod cried to himself as he put a hand on his Champion's knee where the needle still sat in flesh and leaned over the man.

Theodore cringed back.

"What do us Princes know about mortal love? Jack shit, if you ask me!" He laughed and grinned down at him, flicking his nose while at it.

"What about Relmyna?" the Champion asked quietly and turned his face away from their close proximity.

His face immediately changed. "I merely gave her a place, I pulled her out of her despair, I embraced her with my love as her god for she will know none. I inspired her!" He hissed angrily. "And what do I get, a love-struck fool!" Sheogorath laughed and ran his hand through his white hair.

Clinging to the only love she would ever experience, the love of a god to his followers. He wasn't sure if he should pity Relmyna or not, for Daedra, even Sheogorath, was not meant for true love and were even incapable of comprehending such love.

Oblivion was change itself, and the Princes, however constant, were no exception, if not by nature then by time as well. For those who live long enough would experience things that would change themselves inevitably. Is that what was going to happen to him, that he would slowly change and become the Prince of Madness before him?

His love, his hatred, his past, his principles and reasons that made him who he is now, gone… like the days of his youth. Only godhood was all left of him when stripped of all what made him a man.

The curse of madness or was it time itself? How long did he have technically?

"Desperate mortal do-" He held a snarl when Sheogorath snatched the needle out of his knee. "Desperate things!" the Champion finished and glared at the god moving away.

"So, how long you're going to sit there on your bed?" Sheogorath asked cheerfully.

"How long this dream would last?" he asked drily back.

A silly stupid smile crept on Sheogorath's face as he helplessly shrugged.

"You know I'd rather deal with inconvenient dirty dreams than well… this. At least those are _normal_ ," the champion grated.

The Madgod only raised an eyebrow with the smile still on his face. The god then slowly started to pull and lift his own white cotton shirt up over his bare midriff.

* * *

"Hah!" Theodore gasped heavily as cold sweats slid the corner of his face. He wrestled with the cover then stared sourly at the curtains covering his windows, cursing the Madgod.

At least the night was still young, plenty of hours to do what he needed to do. No doubt, Kvatch was not going to allow a count who thinks he can pop over to Oblivion and back like there was no problem.

* * *

 _"We are ada, Mor, and change things through love. We must take care lest we beget more monsters on this earth."_


End file.
